Someone who felt the need for a meditation practice recently got in touch with One Mindful Breath and, after taking part in a Monday evening online meditation session, said ‘I’ve had a look through your website and its great. Just what I’m looking for. So good I went through it all again looking for the catch. There has to be a catch, I thought. But I couldn’t find it. So where is the catch?’

I came to meditation hoping it might ease my nagging sense of unsatisfactoriness. I did initially experience a few moments of ease. However, as I continued to practice, the difficulties remained and often most visibly during meditation. As a result, I mistakenly lost faith in the practice and sought relief through other means.

Do you mow the grass outside your home? Described on RNZ National recently as a ‘green desert’, a lawn is a luxury good, a sign you won’t be needing to graze your sheep on every square cm of your section, and that you’re happy to waste that land.

We’re all born equipped with the evolutionary factors of greed, hatred and delusion, which have helped us survive and thrive as a species – but they’re counterproductive now. That’s not the end of the list of evolutionary factors that once helped us, but now hinder us. Another is our craving for certitude, writes Winton Higgins.

The tide of xenophobia, misogyny, prejudice and callousness towards ‘the Other’ is rising. This is the politics of indecency, so how do we create a sea wall that will turn it back? How do we respond forcefully with a politics of decency? What sort of communities and civil society do we want to build? How can we flourish as humans, living in harmony with each other and with nature, asks Winton Higgins?

At the end of April 2017, Winton Higgins ran a workshop on the dharma and politics, with the title Meditation, and being a global citizen – dharma practice and solidarity in a troubling time. Here, we offer a recording of his talk.

Over the years, I have kept a secret list of what Buddhist meditation teachers do not do. This is not, by far, my complete list, and you won’t find it in Tricycle or Buddhadharma or in the magazine Mindful. Until now, it’s been published only in my mind, writes Linda Modaro.

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Gratitude to Nick Hughes for creating this website, to Sotonian Jim ChampionandUnsplash for most of the lovely images, as well as to everyone who’s put a contribution in the box at an event and supports us through Aotearoa Buddhist Education Trust, enabling us to offer the teachings and experience of the practice without a fixed fee.Thanks also to all those who book the rooms, put out the chairs, welcome people, bring tea & bikkies, clear up at the end of a session, answer your texts, calls and emails, look after the community’s funds, take part in our care committee, and so much more. Words and spaces corralled by Ramsey Margolis.